“So, what do you know of women, master?”
Huh… calling me master… I think it was the first time? But… I guess I’ll take what I can take?
“What do you want to know?”
“How to please a woman?”
Joe actually blinked at that, red flushing his cheeks and he saw Gwenvair and Kilniara both look away in embarrassment. Joe sighed.
“First, that’s a really dumb question to ask especially while in mixed company. Second, if you want to know how to please a woman, find a woman first, then ask her. She will know what she enjoys … quite easily, if I should guess correctly. Simply ask her, she will tell you. I will offer this, however. If you find a woman you love and you marry her, committed to her for life, then you can ask me and I will tell you.”
Zilnek pondered before he nodded seriously, “Then I will await for that time, Master.”
Joe chuckled, “And don’t call me master!”
“Of course, mas… Joe.”
“Good.”
Garnedell seemed very interested as well, but too embarrassed to say anything. Kilniara also seemed quite embarrassed as well, but Gwenvair, despite her embarrassment, stared at Joe with a bit of an avid stare. It took her a bit, but Joe almost groaned when she spoke next.
“So you do know how to please a woman?”
Joe stifled a groan, his eyes falling shut for a moment, “That would be something my wife should know.”
Gwenvair’s smile grew bigger even as she flushed a bit redder, “You do not deny it.”
Joe flared his nostrils and clenched his teeth, this time turning to look at her directly, “You may ask Kilniara if you wish to know some minor details, although she does not know… fully for we are not lovers. That will only come if we choose one another permanently.”
Kilniara flushed red at that, but her lips flickered a soft curve as she struggled to hide a smile and Gwenvair glanced at her. Kilniara nodded softly then shrugged that she did not know, if in great embarrassment since she turned her head away and hid in her hands immediately after.
“Kilniara… does not seem to support the claim.”
“And it is a private claim between me and my lover… when I have one.”
“She is not your lover?”
“I have already told you. I do not take lovers… lightly or easily. I will not take one until I am willing to be with her for life, and she wishes to be with me for life. Then I will ask her to be my wife and lover.”
Gwenvair’s humor slowly left her face, becoming quite serious as she listened to Joe speak, “You are… serious… and … You are an honorable man.”
Joe actually laughed at that, a single chuff, before replying, “I try, but only that. I’m sure I have failed and will in the future fail to maintain honor.”
Gwenvair fell silent at that, nodding, but her mother interjected, her eyes piercing into Joe, “And acceptance of that while still trying for honor is an honor of its own. Honor is as much a committed attempt as it is in the accomplishing of the act.”
Joe listened carefully then slowly began nodding in agreement, “A sentiment I agree with but many of my plane have also used it as an excuse to fail then state that they had honor in the trying. Then, they often simply continually ‘fail’ while claiming to be trying.”
Gwenvair shrugged, “That is not uncommon amongst my people.”
Joe chuckled politely at that, nodding, “Every people has some like that, I believe.”
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Gwenvair nodded, saying nothing while Kilniara interjected eagerly, “Trust me, his is honorable.”
Gwevnaire smiled at that, “Good to know. And the other thing?”
Kilniara looked at Gwenvair, confused a bit, until she understood and then she turned away, blushing brilliantly before slapping Gwenvair on her arm and upper chest. A tinkle of bright laughter broke out and Joe looked over at Gwenvair’s mother in shock as it was genuine laughter. Gwenvair laughed as well, but Kilniara didn’t stop her embarrassed assault.
While the laughter continued, a member of the staff came in and bowed to the group, “The dinner is ready.”
Everyone stirred, standing, and Gwenvair’s mother ended her laughter, seemingly truly happy, “It seems you have found a true one, Gwenvair.”
Gwenvair seemed to smile at that, flushing a bit red but it appeared from excitement, and not embarrassment. She nodded, happy, “Yeah. I think I have.”
Kilniara’s furious assault had fallen to a hug while the two held each other, Kilniara buried in Gwenvair’s body to hide her embarrassment while Gwenvair simply held her. The two stayed like this for a bit until they all left, but Joe was still able to catch the excited whispers between the two girls before they finally stood to follow after. Joe smiled, relieved. A true friend… but, I’m not going to stay here… Joe’s relief turned to concern but he hid the frown, keeping his easy smile.
The meal passed in easy camaraderie, one which Joe did join in, but found himself becoming more disengaged as exhaustion began to take its toll. Gwevnaire’s mother also grew noticeably exhausted and begged leave almost immediately after dinner. Joe didn’t last much longer, saying good night and dragging himself to his room. Despite his exhaustion, he made sure to check his gains at least one more time before bed time and to exhaust training his job change skills in all of his priest jobs.
Sadly, while he did gain a few more levels that day in both the primate and navigator job, no new jobs were unlocked, even when navigator made forty. Navigator did get a new skill, party on map that immediately made Joe excited then confused and he engaged his magic map skill that navigator had to test it out. The map came up, an exquisitely detailed top down view of the area that he’d personally gone with several green dots, off to the side and obviously in the living room. This is… the same as before, why would I … Suddenly, one of the dots moved slightly to the side and Joe frowned. Wait? Then… He zoomed into the map until it was only the living room, close enough to see even individual furniture in the room and Joe blinked with some surprise when the green dots began to take on a more humanoid frame, no longer a dot. Every dozen or so seconds, the shapes would change and shift, moving slightly.
Then, he heard Garnedell call out that he was going to bed and he quickly focused on the map. A dozen or so seconds later, Garnedell’s small human form jumped down the hallway, then later into his room. Joe watched on with some fascination until he saw him finally lay down in bed and Joe realized that there was a lot more detail now. Oooh! Ok. Definitely nice! Going to be very, very useful! Really going to use that a lot! Would be nice if it even maybe had a 3D ‘street view’ look as well? Joe waited in hope, but nothing happened and he sighed. Maybe something else I need to do? Or is it an upgrade? I wonder if…
It was then that he realized that Garnedell’s room was a rather empty void, hidden behind the ‘fog of war’ that was typical of places that he hadn’t seen yet. Oh! Wait… how am I seeing him? Wasn’t I unable to see anything in the fog of war before? I thought it was just a … vague feeling and an arrow pointing in a general direction. If this is… How big can it go? The thought hit him and he zoomed out, and zoomed out, and zoomed out. And as he went further out, felt his eyebrows rise higher and higher until he was looking at a massive global, almost the entirety of it covered and unknowable to him. Fascinated curiosity took him, and he tried again. Zoom out. The screen zoomed out further, the planet fading to a rather insignificant sphere really not showing anything meaningful, but another fifty one spheres suddenly popped into existence, surrounding a rather massive sphere in the center. There’s no way this is to scale, can I… He’s thoughts stuttered to a halt when the map jittered a bit, then suddenly zoomed out further, the gas giant at the center fading to an almost tiny dot and the fifty two moons evaporated with the zoom out, fading to nothing except for a glowing dot and a label attached to it, placing each in place around the gas giant. Joe breathed with excited trepidation, cursing softly under his breath in shock. He’d known… but knowing and personally experiencing, as always, were quantifiably different. He stared at the gas giant moon system, then breathed softly, going one more time. Zoom out.
Thought ended as fascinated horror mounted. His position in the map zoomed away again, the gas giant disappearing to a small glowing dot once again with the label the only thing identifying it. A massive map appeared before him. It was a strange spread of dots everywhere evenly spread out. The dots spread out in no rhyme or reason, at least as he could understand them, until he quickly began to notice that the dots seemed to be categorized by a brightness. There were hundreds of millions of incredibly dim dots that massively crowded around slightly brighter dots. These slightly brighter dots surrounded an even brighter dot but remained distinctly separate from one another. These brighter dots likewise surrounded another even brighter more massive dot while also remaining distinctly separate. And these last massive glowing dots dominated the area across the space, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. And these massive dots all oriented around another single glowing dot in the center. Around the glowing single middle dot at the center, millions, even billions, of small dots spread outwards across the map in an organization that offered no semblance to the actual Milky Way.